


We Pick Ourselves Undone

by apropensityforcharm



Series: Season 6 Reaction Fics [2]
Category: Glee
Genre: 6x02 reaction, Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 15:02:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3176559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apropensityforcharm/pseuds/apropensityforcharm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This time, he lets the tears fall."<br/>6x02 reaction. In which Kurt is a bit of an emotional mess, because that's what happens when you hold things in like he did. Canon compliant; set after Homecoming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Pick Ourselves Undone

Rachel removes Kurt from the Homecoming soon after they spot Blaine and Karofsky. He feels like there are thumbtacks stuck in the back of his throat and it must show on his face because Rachel takes one look at him, places a firm hand at the small of his back and another around his bicep, and leads him back to her car. She sits him in the passenger seat and says, ‘I’ll be back soon, okay? I just need to make our goodbyes to the others.’

Kurt feels rather like a child, but he finds that he doesn’t mind so much. He thinks he might need someone to take care of him right now.

Rachel disappears over the fence, back towards the light and the noise and  _Blaine and Karofsky_ , sitting in the back of the truck,  _cuddling._ Even the thought of it burns him.

Is Blaine happy with Karofsky? He must be happy. Karofsky is – Karofsky is the miracle child who turned his entire lifestyle on its head in the space of about a year. Kurt wonders how he did it, how he went from threatening to kill Kurt, from trying to kill  _himself,_ to doing the electric slide in a gay bar. To cuddling his boyfriend – oh  _god_ – in public where anyone could see. Why couldn’t Kurt have a success story like that? Why is he sitting in the dust that Karofsky left behind when he tore on ahead?

Obviously, Karofsky can give Blaine something that Kurt just couldn’t.

‘You’re emotionally frigid, Kurt!’ Blaine had yelled during one of their many fights leading up to the end. ‘Do you even feel anything at all?’

‘I am  _trying,’_ Kurt had said through tight lips. His heart felt as though it was twisting in his chest, desperate for air.

‘You’ve been  _trying_ for years,’ Blaine had spat.

‘Yeah, well, I had people telling me that everything about me was  _wrong_ for years as well!’ Kurt snapped. ‘Forgive me if it takes a little time.’

‘ _Years,_ Kurt,’ Blaine seethed, and then span on his heel and stalked out the room, his arms folded and his shoulders angry jagged points.

Later that night, Blaine had pulled Kurt close to him in the dark of their room, pressed him down into the crook of his neck and smoothed at his hair soothingly. ‘I know it’s hard,’ Blaine had murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of Kurt’s hair. ‘I know you’re trying.’

Kurt had blinked back the tears, and wondered when the idea of crying began to scare him so much.

When Rachel gets back, she looks at his red rimmed eyes and doesn’t say anything at all. She takes him to her home, leads him upstairs by the hand and hugs him close. And now he sits in Rachel’s room in the exact same position as he’d once sat with Blaine, his nose pressed to her throat while she threads gentle fingers through his hair. She still smells like smoke from the bonfire at Homecoming. This time, he lets the tears fall.

He didn’t know how to tell Blaine that the idea of being vulnerable was possibly the most terrifying thing he could have asked from Kurt. It was always so easy for Blaine to show how he felt. His emotions sat like a second layer of his skin and it didn’t matter how many times he whispered it into Kurt’s hair, he never really understood how scared the idea of being vulnerable made Kurt. He never, ever understood that it wasn’t so easy as taking off his armour at the end of a long day. To porcelain, to ivory, to steel, that was what Kurt was  _made_  of.

Every time he went to be honest, express how he was feeling, it was as though someone had collared his throat, hauled him back on his leash when he opened his mouth. Blaine never understood that. He thought that everyone felt things in the same way he did.

And maybe Kurt was guilty of that too.

In his first therapy session, his therapist had looked at him across the table and asked, ‘And why do you think it was so hard for you to say anything?’

Because it wasn’t until Kurt was sixteen that he made any friends at all. Because when Kurt was eight years old and the kids in his class  _mocked_ him about losing his mother, his dad had still been too broken to say anything to, and Kurt had had to deal with it on his own. Because the bullies in high school conditioned him to believe that nobody would ever touch him in a way that wasn’t violent. Because Karofsky had made him feel as though his whole life was ending, and nobody at all noticed besides a near stranger in a prep school blazer. Because he’d been taught his whole life that the only way to protect himself was to not say anything at all.

‘I don’t know,’ he’d said eventually.

His therapist had looked at him like she was well aware he wasn’t telling the truth and had said, ‘We’ll keep thinking about that one then.’

He really did try so hard.

 _Relationships are about trust, and I choose to trust you._ He always felt weak as a baby bird at the idea of it, and maybe he never did believe that the wind would catch him when he left the nest for the first time. Didn’t trust himself, didn’t trust  _Blaine_ that he was built to fly; his wings never opened and now that steep, panicked drop to the concrete has finally come to an end. And he’s alone.

Why is it so easy, he wonders, to allow Rachel to hold him while he cries? What is it about her that means ‘safe’?

He didn’t pledge his life to Rachel. Nobody asked him to put his heart in her hands and trust that she wouldn’t flatten it.

Blaine did that once. Forgot how much their relationship meant to them, lost  _faith_ in what they had and – destroyed everything that had been built.  _I was with someone_ he’d said, and Kurt’s lungs had collapsed in on themselves and he’d been left gasping for air, alone.

He’d thought he was over that. He  _was_ over that, wasn’t he? He’d talked with Blaine about it, talked about why  _Blaine_ had felt the way he had, had even been able to joke about it after a while. He was over it.

But he can remember how it felt every time Blaine stormed off after their fights, or after Kurt left Blaine when  _he_ stormed off. He can remember the way the panic would fill his throat, that dark whisper of  _what if_ stuck in a brain that just didn’t know how to form the words.  _What if this is the last time._ What if, what if, what if.

And then Blaine had said,  _I think I should move out._

And Blaine had said,  _One day, you’re going to wake up and realise ‘I don’t love him anymore’._

And every time, the words had hit ugly in Kurt’s gut and he’d heard  _I don’t think this relationship is going to work._ Kurt knows now that Blaine always did believe in their relationship. He wanted to work for it, he was  _willing_ to work for it. It was Kurt who ripped it all apart.

It hadn’t been working, Kurt knows that. He’d let the doubts fill his mind, crowded and so loud that even he didn’t know how he felt about the whole thing. He’d watched himself pick fights with Blaine over the smallest things to try and get a reaction out of him so that maybe Blaine would ask him what was wrong, give him a little bit of  _help_ to start the conversation because he couldn’t do it on his own. He would try and the fear would steal his voice, leave only a ghost in its wake. And at some point it became that he forgot how special they were, how good things could be when they were  _good._ He forgot how lonely he had been before Blaine, the strangled, desperate desire for a connection that he’d strived for all his life. He’d forgotten that some things are worth fighting for.

Kurt had already dug a war trench between them and informed Blaine,  _This side is mine. Stay out._

His therapist says he has this thing with  _intimacy._

And Blaine hadn’t said anything. He’d  _known_ how wrong things had become, watched the tide come in, lap at his toes, his thighs, his neck, and he’d never once asked what was wrong until the water was over his head, and the air had been starved from both of their lungs.

Why didn’t you ask what was wrong?

And now he hates me, Kurt thinks miserably, and his chest hitches in another sob. Rachel holds him tighter. He thinks we’re low enough to steal a student from him. Is this what it’s always going to be like?

Like she can sense what he’s thinking, Rachel pulls back and rests a hand on his cheek. She stares at him with her big brown eyes and reassures him, ‘He’s just angry. Give him time?’

He’s had months.

‘If it makes you feel better, I totally gave him and Karofsky dirty looks when I went to say goodbye to everyone else,’ she offers.

Kurt smiles a little and slumps back down onto her shoulder. He closes his eyes when she starts running her fingers through his hair again. Her shoulder is too thin, his head is cushioned on her long hair, and under the smell of smoke he can detect a hint of her feminine perfume. She doesn’t feel  _right,_ not the way he wants right now. But she’s still there, loyally by his side even while the rest of their friends sing and dance over at the school. He doesn’t know how to tell her how much that means to him.

He should tell her how much it means to him.

‘Thank you,’ he whispers. Her fingers still in his hair, and then she turns her head to press a kiss to his hair.

‘Always,’ she murmurs.

His therapist says that intimacy is about vulnerability, and vulnerability is about honesty. And it’s still scary, his throat still closes up at the thought, but he’s Kurt Hummel. He’s never been afraid of a challenge. He can do this.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and/or comments would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading. <3


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